Conversion specialist Bryan Eisenberg just posted a great list of 69 Free or Low Cost Tools to Improve Your Web Site :

http://www.bryaneisenberg.com/2009/09/free-tools-to-improve-your-website/

Here are a few of my other favorite tool lists:

SEO Guru Todd Malicoat's summary of "Tool Time With Todd" twitter sessions: http://www.stuntdubl.com/tooltime/

An older, but still functional list of SEO tools: http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html

Of course, the seoMOZ tool sets: http://www.seomoz.org/toolbox

And then some excellent research tools from AdCenter Labs: http://adlab.msn.com/alltools.aspx My favorite is the Commercial Intent Tool.

Bookmark 'em.… Continue reading

Dear Google,

I used to Love your webmaster tools. You have lots of great features, like site map configuration, crawler diagnostics and top search queries and positions. But why must you tease us by pretending to report on incoming links?

Sure, you call it a "sampling" and carefully word your descriptions with phrases like "links we have available to show you."

If "Links to your site" is a sampling, and the basis isn't known or consistent, then what is the intended use of the report?

Case in point: Throughout 2009, Webmaster tools reports… Continue reading

Back on June 13, 2009 over 500,000 Facebook users managed to grab a Facebook Vanity URL as their own unique mark in the social media landscape. Now millions are grabbing the chance to have a distinct, indexable web address for a personal or business presence through Facebook.

In the first land rush, Facebook imposed some account age requirements to limit name squatting and the organization offered some allowance for trademarked names, but this also has ended.

As of last Monday, June 29, 2009, the account age restriction… Continue reading

Last night we noticed that Google dropped links from the Twitter Profile page for a significant number of web sites.

For our own web sites and our clients' sites, we monitor new links and links lost. It's a good practice for any SEO. More importantly, we monitor when Google recognizes or disregards incoming links to a website as reported in Google Webmastertools.

We've noticed these events seem to occur in clusters, and last night indicated that Google is thinking less of links from Twitter. In one sweep, Google dropped the Twitter Profile "URL" incoming link for every site we monitor.

Examples from a… Continue reading

We often talk about the Dream Team of Market Motive, and indeed they are. Here's a "way back" trip to my former dream team. Bryan of ZURB interaction designers just posted some images that remind me of the privilege I had to work with a highly creative and fun team at ClickTracks - back in the day.

Blue guy represented a web visitor in an analytics world, but grew to represent reports, products and promotions over time. We went a little overboard trying to come up with… Continue reading

Here's a simple tool that I use in my email deliverability arsenal that helps eliminate spam words in my outbound messages. The script measures the likelihood that an email will fall into a recipient's "junk mail" folder in Outlook 2003. Outlook 2003 uses a word weighting system and this measurement does not guarantee delivery into other mail clients. However, the spam words indicated by Outlook 2003 are used in other inbox protection systems and we have found this tool to be very useful to help us clean up copy and increase the chance for delivery into all inboxes. Paste your email subject… Continue reading

If one of Google's most significant challenges is to clear the cesspool of content spam, the temptation to use analytics data must be stronger than ever.

There is already evidence that Google is factoring in domain age and the presence of legitimacy indicators on site pages. There's even talk of giving more credibility to well branded sites or certain types of sites. But one of the more significant factors mentioned in one of Google's patents is "time spent on the document".

Longer time on the… Continue reading

I just taught email marketing and Universal Search techniques at a small business marketing conference.

A well intended friend asked me why I "wasted time speaking at a small business marketing conference." He went on to suggest that I only target major conferences that attract 'bigger' clients.

At the conference, I was joined by some excellent speakers who also regularly serve large clients. But I suspect that's not why they were there. It's certainly not why I was there.

In online marketing, small businesses run circles around corporate America. Unburdened by red tape, they test, fail, innovate, fail, try one more time and succeed. It's inspiring. It's educational. And it's really fun.

In the email marketing session, at least 80% of the Continue reading

Sure, we teach search marketing online, but I assert that Search Engine Strategies is a must-attend conference for any internet marketer who can travel to the event.

We'll be making some announcements at the conference and all active faculty and associates are presenting . Come by the booth and say hello to Market Motive founders and faculty.

Dream Team member Todd Malicoat and others are hosting a special party on Monday night where all proceeds go to charity. Some of the biggest names in search will be present and there'll be… Continue reading

How many people do you pay to touch your web presence? Nowadays, anyone who changes your site or outbound communication has the potential to derail your hard-earned search marketing progress.

Sure, your staff and consultants are smart - and well intended. But this isn't enough today. Anyone with access must now have a basic knowledge of search marketing. If you have a large staff, I'll bet you're starting to get the picture.

Are you already familiar with some of the following mistakes? Perhaps your:

• Writers didn't include your top keywords in the main copy
• Design team